From the Ashes
by Phantomrose96
Summary: Danny escapes by the skin of his teeth after a daring rescue of his cousin. The details are still fuzzy, but when Danny falls ill seven months later, he learns precisely what horror saved him that day.
1. Chapter 1: Recycle

(tw: potentially disturbing)

Danny blinked sweat from his eyes as he made a mad dash across Vlad Master's front lawn. Ectoplasmic bombs exploded left and right, grazing his shoulder, his leg, and dousing his whole body in wave after wave of caustic heat. The air, several hundred degrees hot and sapped of moisture, hurt to even breathe; it clung to and clawed at his throat with each wheezing gasp.

"Danielle!" he screamed. Danny shut his mouth, breathing violently through his nostrils to try to quiet the sound of his own panting. Nothing—he heard nothing, and his mouth burst open to suck in gulps of searing air. "Danielle!" he tried again, but still her voice didn't call back.

She made it out. She's gone. She's fine.

Danny landed hard on his ankle, changing paths just in time to side-step a mound of raised grass. He felt his heart skip a beat at the realization that he almost landed right on top of a mine; the idea chilled him to the bone. The thought of taking to the air, of flying above the minefield, passed weakly through his mind, but the throbbing ache of his ectoplasmic core refused him. He didn't have that kind of energy; he'd wrung himself dry.

His whole world shifted to a violent slant. Something hit him square in the back with enough force to send him tumbling into the hot turf. He cracked his nose on a jutting rock, rolled onto his back, and cupped his gloves over the gushing green seeping from his nostrils. He tried to cry out in pain, but the moan got caught in his dried throat. Through tear-stained eyes, Danny could only watch as his pursuer caught up. The man loomed above him; the ground burned hot on his back.

"Plasmius, I can explain," Danny wheezed through his parched mouth. He tasted salty sweat on his lips.

Vlad didn't miss a beat while Danny pleaded. He stepped closer, raised his right hand until the gloved appendage blocked out the sun. Something close to joy crossed the older man's his face, and a bright red ball of ectoplasmic fire charged in his palm.

Danny rolled onto his stomach, heart pounding out of control, and spotted a lump of earth to his right—a swollen patch of grass, bloated with an unseen ectobomb, the kind he'd been trying so hard to not set off.

"_What are you—_?" came Vlad's distant voice, now drowned in the permanent ring resounding through Danny's ears. "_Daniel, stop!_"

Too late, and he slammed his open hand into the dirt.

…

Seven months passed since the mid-summer rescue of his cousin. Danny took a cruel, but still rather unpleasant joy in watching from above as Vlad Master's landscapers labored day in and day out to repair the scorched front yard. As he understood it, Vlad explained the destruction away as the result of a few teenagers who'd bypassed security and set off fireworks on his lawn. It didn't do much to explain the periodic patches of dug-up dirt where Vlad had removed each remaining landmine, but Danny could only assume the billionaire had an excuse cooked up for those too.

Landmines. _Landmines_ of all things.

Thinking back to the day raised phantom aches and pains in his body Danny would much rather forget. He rubbed absently at the tingle it left in his palms and was thankful for just a moment to have a distraction from the headache pounding behind his eyes.

Puffy dark bags underlined his eyes, his skin a shade paler than average, and Danny fantasized about collapsing on his bed the second he got home. Eyes to the clock: 10:34 AM—February second, third period, 10:34 AM, and still a half hour to go until lunch.

The tingle came back to his palms, his right thumb absently kneading the rivets between finger joints.

He yawned, flexed his hands, and moved to rubbing his temples. The headache was definitely getting worse. He could sense patches of his sight winking out of existence. They didn't turn to black—they just became blind spots, non-existent until he shifted his eyes ever so slightly.

The sharp rap of a pencil on his desk caught his attention.

"_You okay_?" Tucker mouthed, eyes flickering between Danny and Lancer.

_"Fine. Sick_," Danny mouthed back.

"_For like the tenth time this year_."

"_I'm fine_." Danny insisted again, and this time he turned his head forward, effectively cutting Tucker out of his vision.

His veins turned to ice when he accidentally locked eyes with Lancer. From the veiled annoyance on his teacher's face, Danny knew without a doubt Lancer had caught the silent exchange.

"Mr. _Fenton_ thank you for volunteering." He held out the chalk, pinched loosely between thumb and index finger. "Rewrite the sentence in subjunctive."

Danny grumbled inwardly. He strained his eyes to focus on the board, but the words came back fuzzy, gaps cropping up between letters. He could feel his tired heart pounding in his neck. He wanted so bad to sleep.

Too many ghost hunts. Too much homework. Too much hanging around sick people. Danny resolved to start bathing in disinfectant as he rose from his seat.

"Mr. Lancer I don't think that's a good idea," Tucker balked. He stood before Danny had the chance to fully rise from his seat.

"Why not?"

"Danny was just telling me how he's not feeling well," Tucker answered truthfully.

Mr. Lancer cocked his head, surveying Danny with different eyes. A little bit of the color seemed to drain from his old face.

"Danny, do you need to go to the nurse?"

Danny blinked, looking up at Lancer without really seeing him. After two shuffling steps he paused. Confusion racked his brain as, for a moment, he forgot why he had stood. His heart startled at the sudden exertion of energy and beat frantically in his ears to compensate. It drowned his thoughts, it ate up his vision, it made his knees buckle.

He didn't even feel his head connect with the tiled floor.

"_Danny_?"

Lancer's voice, was it?

He couldn't tell over the gush of blood pulsing inside his head. The frantic beating of his heart hurt, it killed in fact, it drowned out their voices,

and then it stopped all together.

…

Danny sat up in his hospital bed, dull-eyed, remote in hand, anxiety eating out his insides. He clicked absently through the channels, one to the next, on the 12x12 tv screwed into the top-right corner. He'd been given his own room, a privilege according to the doctor, with a bay window on the right side (blinds pulled), an adjustable bed (which we wasn't allowed to control), and his own closet (as though he had a need for it). Danny didn't have the time to enjoy any of it.

His mind was focused on the the puzzled looks that dominated the nurses' faces, on the hushed conversations they had with the doctors, on their eyes shifting nervously in his direction. His hands smoothed over the silky gown they'd given him, off-white with a faint pattern of blue balloons down the front and sleeves, as an anxious tick every time he thought too hard about it.

It terrified him to imagine what they found; it terrified him more to think what they'd already confided in his parents. Would they think he was a ghost masquerading as their son? Would they even give him the chance to explain?

"We're right here protecting you, you know. No matter what," Sam offered into the silence, as though she had read Danny's thoughts. She balled her hands in her short skirt. Danny took notice of the goose-bumps raised up and down her legs.

"You gonna protect me when my heart gives out again?" Danny asked coldly. Flip. Flip. Channel 45. Channel 46. News. Car commercial. Infomercial.

"It's not gonna happen again," Tucker croaked. His head was turned, eyes trained intensely on the television. His whole body shook subtly. "G-go back. I think that was Friends."

"Just take a break from ghost fighting for a couple weeks, okay? We've got it—Jazz, Tucker, and me."

Danny nodded and nothing more. He was afraid to speak again, afraid of betraying just how shaken up he felt.

A nurse saved him from giving an actual answer. Her curly-haired head popped into the doorway, body still in the hall, and whispered in a voice just loud enough for Danny to hear, "Why don't you kids get some coffee and a snack? We're trying to let him rest."

Sam nodded, Tucker tried to, and both rose rigidly from their seats. Tucker's pale face shimmered with sweat.

"We'll be back in a bit, okay Danny?"

He lowered the remote, set his eyes on their nervous faces, and tried for a smile. "Yeah. And you're right—I'll be fine in a bit. Just…go get some fresh air and I'll see you around school."

They smiled in response and walked backwards out the door—Tucker first, then Sam. In the same beat, the curly-haired nurse entered with a near-empty cart trailing behind her.

She offered him a thin, warm smile, tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and grabbed two small wires off the cart. The ends connected to two adhesive circles, both of which she smoothed onto Danny's temple. Another motherly smile, and the faint buzz of electricity hummed from both sides of his head.

"C-can I ask you? If you guys uh…if you find anything unusual, do you tell me first? Or do you tell my parents?" Danny balled his hands up in his sheets. "J-just curious."

Her wide gray eyes locked on his, gentle and kind. "Keeping secrets?" she asked in a voice lower than Danny had expected.

"S-sorta. I could explain to the doctor what I…W-well it's a bit complicated, but it'll make sense in the end I promise."

"You can try explaining it to me, sweetheart. Drugs maybe? We won't get you in trouble."

"Not drugs…it's something else."

"Oh, is it the malfunctioning ghostly core sitting where your heart should be? A real weight on your chest, making your heart pump blood through that fetid thing. I guess that's what happens to irritating little ghost boys."

His mouth tasted like sand, blood thrumming through his ears again as his heart-rate quickened.

"W-what do you…? How'd you…? W-who—?"

"Oh don't blubber; it's embarrassing to us both."

The voice resonated crystal clear in Danny's head.

"G-get out of her!" He nearly shouted. His hoarse voice cracked at the effort. With a burst of clarity, Danny yanked the wires from his head. "What are these?!" he demanded as he shook them in front of the nurse's face.

The cold smile disappeared from her lips, eyes rolling back into her head as she fell. The imposing form of Vlad Plasmius congealed behind her, his hands dusting each other off.

"What'd you do to her?"

"She's fine, Daniel."

"Get out. Get out of here now. I'll scream. I'll scream and my parents will come in here with their weapons blazing!"

"And I will be long gone before that happens. Take a deep breath and collect yourself."

"Why should I? So you can…can finish me off while I can't fight back?" His eyes grew wide and scared. He huddled backwards on his sheets, painfully aware of how vulnerable a target he was "Did you do this to me? What did you do to me?"

This time Vlad actually laughed. He turned his attention to the computer that logged the information collected from the two wires that had been attached to Danny's head. He scanned it with a pocket-sized device he'd removed from under his cape. "What exactly do you think I've done to you?"

"Poisoned me, maybe. Tried to kill me. I won't let you do it. I won't let you ki—"

"Oh use your head for one second, Daniel!" Vlad countered. His crimson eyes turned on the boy, strangely offended. Their violent gleam softened as he smoothed a hand over his hair, composure quickly returning. "Tell me one good reason I would want to kill you."

"Because that's how arch enemies work?" Danny spat back as jammed his elbow into the soft linen, raising shakily on the lone support.

"_You_ are not my arch enemy. I don't_ have_ an arch enemy, Daniel, I have nuisances—If it feeds your ego, you can be my _arch_ nuisance."

"Fine then. Arch nuisance. That doesn't change anything. I'm always in your hair, aren't I? Always ruining your plans to…to date my mom or rule the town or the whole world o-or whatever you do. No one's gonna stop you if I'm dead, right?!"

Vlad met him with a level gaze. The usual vitriol was gone from his eyes, and something close to patience overtook his sickly blue face. Rings whisked out around his body, sweeping past with little acknowledgment from him and leaving the very human Vlad Masters in their wake.

"Let me explain to you some facts Daniel." He raised one, now-gloveless finger. "One, there is one thin defense keeping my identity a secret, and that is your own petty need to keep your identity a secret as well. If you die, your friends won't let your heroics go unsung. What then? What's to keep your friends and sister from spilling my secret to the world?"

Danny licked his lips, lost for words.

"If that were the case, I'd probably have to kill all three of them—" Danny shot forward in his bed, but Vlad met him with an open hand, palm out "—WHICH I don't care to do. Evil ghosts and child murderers do_ not_ do particularly well in popularity polls. I'd rather keep my hands as clean as possible so long as I'm trying to keep suspicion off my shoulders."

"I'd _never_ let you—"

"I'm not going to kill them, Daniel. It was a hypothetical." Vlad let out a tense breath, quick to reassume his immaculate appearance. "Second," he started, raising another finger "you do a decent, if rather sloppy, job of cleaning up the ghosts in this town. Mayors running ghost infested cities ALSO don't rank too highly. You're my free maid at the moment, and I'd be a fool if I one day decided to _kill_ you for the joy of it. I don't care to think about the kind of overtime I'd have to put in if ghost hunting were heaped on my plate."

Danny's teeth ground together. "Interesting…so if I were to stop fighting ghosts, you'd pick up the slack?"

Vlad's mouth curled into a smile. "What a useless, useless observation to make now." A third finger shot up. "Also, your death would likely damage Maddie in ways I cannot repair. As much as I'd like to imagine her in a position that requires the undivided emotional support of someone _stronger_ than her bumbling husband, I'm not sure I could truly fix her. Your death _could_ drive a wedge between her and Jack, but it could just as easily solder them together." He lowered his hand, eyes cold and serious. "Case in point, I have a vested interest in keeping you alive."

Danny glanced down warily at the two wires still clenched in his fist. "So then…are you here to help me?"

Vlad, following the same line of thought, snatched the wires back and stuck them in the bottom deck of the cart he'd wheeled in. "There is no 100% accurate answer to that. I'm going to go with 'yes.'"

Danny's pulse quickened under his skin. "Do you know what's wrong with me?"

"Yes."

"Can you cure it?"

"No."

He looked up, blinking surprise from his bleary eyes. "'No'…you don't know how to cure it?"

"I do not."

"My heart—"

"—is fighting through its last few beats."

Danny's head shook rhythmically, a short, clipped laugh bursting from his throat. "But you're going to fix it? All that stuff you said about how absolutely screwed you are if I die—you're here to fix me then."

"I can't fix it, Daniel. It's beyond fixing."

"Then…then what? Does it just give out? Am I…going to be okay?"

Vlad suppressed a smile, amused. "Yes and no."

Eyes flitting between Vlad's steely gray ones, Danny clenched his jaw. "Better question: am I going to die?"

"Yes…and a little bit no."

"What do you mean 'yes and no'?" he demanded, rising weakly on one shaky hand. "If this is a half-ghost joke I swear—" The shallow fluttering pulse in his neck grew quick, weak, and an icy cold shiver shot through his whole body. For just a second, he swore he felt the sputtering muscle freeze.

"Did you….did you do this to me?" Danny whispered pathetically. Darkness encroached the edge of his vision, and he fought to slow his heart before it gave out with a final flutter.

"I really love hearing how you phrase these—I would say…no. I didn't do it to you; it was more of something I couldn't prevent. Ask it a different way, see what answer you get."

"So what? How are you gonna help me? How are you gonna fix me?"

"Daniel, do you know what you do with a toaster whose fuse has blown?"

"…You fix the fuse?"

"No, that's much too costly. Who's to say it will even work properly? Toasters get old, wear out. Their parts become unreliable." Vlad turned, eyes to the window, before cocking his head back to Danny. "Do you give up yet?"

"…Fine. What do you do?"

Vlad answered with a smile. "You buy a new one."

"A-a new one…" Danny shut his eyes, willing his brain to follow the conversation. "A new heart then? You're getting me a new heart then? Is that the riddle? My heart stops beating, so I die, but I keep living with a new one."

Vlad sucked air in through his teeth, condescending. "Ooh close. You're on the right track, but not quite there. Eventually I think you'll guess right." A dark gleam overtook his eyes and he reached for the empty back cart. "We're replacing the whole toaster, Daniel."

His hand made contact with something on the cart's surface. He locked his fist around it, and the veil of invisibility melted away in a shimmering sweep. There, unconscious on the table, lay a duplicate of Danny Fenton. Black hair, thin light arms, eyes closed in peaceful sleep.

Danny's mouth went dry. "You can't be serious. You…you're gonna replace me? Body snatcher style? Don't you realize how—how messed up that is?! Don't you think they'll notice?!"

The older man turned to survey the new body, teeth digging into his lower lip as he considered the boy's words. "Yes I suppose it is quite messed up, but it's my best option." He smiled. "And I'm willing to put down a fair share of money that says no one will notice the swap."

Danny lost all control of the fluttering, panicked, wispy beating in his chest. Numbness crawled through his left arm. Blackness bloomed in his eyes. "No…No this is all messed up. This is all _kinds_ of messed up! You're insane. _Insane_. You think you can just _dump_ a clone of me at my doorstep and get away with it?!"

"I do, actually." Vlad removed the little electronic device he'd used to scan the computer, clipped in the two wires he'd snatched back from Danny, and attached the adhesive ends to the clone's head. "Memory upload—give me a minute." He looked over at Danny with a grin. "You won't remember this conversation, a shame." As he turned to the clone, Vlad muttered something else just too quiet for Danny to hear.

"You're crazy. You're crazy. You're insane. You're crazy."

"Uh-huh…" Vlad answered, the smile clear in his voice.

"What am I…What did I…What's happening? What's happening to me? Why am I dying? What did I do? What did I—? What did I do?"

"You want to know what happened?" Vlad set the device down on the cart, eyes swinging around to the delirious boy on the bed. The joy had left his eyes. "You exploded, Daniel."

Danny looked down at his body, ignoring the numbness creeping through to his bones. His arms felt heavy, legs too, but through his shoddy vision he could still make out the shape of his own fully-formed body.

"No…No I—why am I going to explode?"

"No—" Vlad unclipped the adhesive wires from the clone and pointed one at Danny, "—_you_ are going to die of heart failure."

"You said…I'd explode."

"That is not what I said."

"I heard you."

"You misheard me." Vlad ran a tongue over his lips, mouth pressing into a seam. "Perhaps…I _should_ apologize. That failing heart inside your chest?" He walked over to Danny, bent down, and stared, eyebrows arched in sympathy. "I _really_ thought I had gotten it right this time. Live and learn, I suppose."

Danny pressed a hand over his collar bone. He couldn't feel the touch of his cold fingers on his skin.

Vlad returned to his stance by the clone and laid a hand on the new boy's wrist. "I should also apologize for letting you run much too long. I thought I could wait this one out—perhaps you'd recover on your own." He shrugged, hand tightening around the unconscious clone. "Oh well—eighth time's the charm, I suppose."

"…Eighth?" Danny whispered with shallow breath.

Vlad skirted behind him, unplugging machines one by one. The steady, reassuring beep of the heart monitor disappeared. He winced at the faint pinches of IV lines being pulled from his arms. Finally, he felt Vlad's hand come down on his shoulder, and the familiar cold of invisibility bled through his body.

"Sleep tight, #7."

And then his shriveled, stretched, scarred heart squeezed through one last pathetic beat before coming to its final rest.

…

"Dude, what'd that nurse even give you after we left?" Tucker sat, legs crossed, on the floor of Danny's bedroom. He gripped an X-Box controller between both hands, thrashing wildly as he crushed the joystick under his locked thumb. "Not fair not fair! Sam's cheating."

"It was a _powerup_," she countered haughtily.

Danny only shook his head, strangely content with being in last place. "I don't know. The nurse came in, hooked up something to my head, and I fell asleep. Next thing I know the doctor's saying I got a clean bill of health."

"The wonders of ghost powers," Tucker mused, eyes still locked on the game. "It's better this way. No more icky hospitals from now on, okay?"

"A week of forced bedrest isn't much better."

"Beats being dead," Sam answered. Gloatingly, she set the controller down on the floor as her character cruised past the finish line. "First."

"Still not fair! I was in first for the first _and_ second lap! Danny you saw!"

"Sore loser," Sam scoffed jokingly.

"Danny, be the judge!" Tucker whined, but he already knew it was a lost battle. He simply kicked his controller, mumbling about "powerups."

"You two go have a rematch then." Danny sat up, kicked back his blankets, and put both feet on the ground. He stood with his hands stretching toward the ceiling.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked. Tucker had already lunged for his remote, snatching up the best character.

"Getting some air," Danny answered, rings splitting his form. "I'll be back in ten minutes top."

"Okay. _I'll_ be beating Sam when you return."

"I'll hold you to it," Danny answered with a flat laugh and phased through his roof.

February was chilly, but the cold melded well with his ghost self. It thrummed against his core, charging him up, and Danny took to doing somersaults through the sky. He felt better than he had in weeks.

He promised himself one quick fly-by through town. Over the Nasty Burger, past the school, with a few minutes to float and gloat over the mess that still dominated the Masters' front lawn.

Danny surveyed the property, mildly impressed with how well the landscapers had redone the right side of the lawn. Holes, scorch marks, and occasional mounds of dirt still littered the left side. He looked closer, and felt his heart jump at the sight of Vlad digging, alone, on the hidden side of a once-grassy, once-green hill. Uprooting another bomb probably, and the thought of watching it explode in Vlad's face made Danny feel giddy.

He lowered himself in time to watch Vlad grab…nothing…from the side of the freshly-dug hole and roll it in. The _thud_ that followed betrayed that it wasn't, in fact, nothing, but an invisible something. He hung back, cautious, and watched Vlad heap the dirt back over the hole. The section of lawn wouldn't be visible from the house, or any of the neighbors' houses—only from this sky-high vantage point.

Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Thirty—before Vlad had fully covered the hole. He vainly dusted off the dirt that had stained every inch of his outfit and retired—exhausted—inside.

Danny flew lower, careful not to touch down on the ground on the off-chance that any bombs remained from his July skirmish with Vlad, and observed the covered hole from above. His eyes drifted to the left, counting one, two, three, four, five, six other patches of disturbed earth in varying states of grassy regrowth—seven total.

He looked up, around, behind him, and with a chill noticed that this was the exact section of lawn on which Vlad had cornered him all those months ago. He thought hard—on the ground, Vlad behind him, grass hot on his back, he'd slammed the mine. It must have exploded, but he didn't remember.

Reckless. Stupid. Suicidal maybe, but it had worked. He'd woken up outside, on the ground, largely unscathed.

Absently, Danny let one foot touch the ground, and a gentle _snap_ split the air. He startled before lifting his shoe and honing in on the tiny sliver of white that had split in two under the weight of his boot. One hand snatched it from the grass, and he brought it close to his eyes.

Hard, white, a sliver of bone. He turned it in his hands, rubbing at the dirt-covered end in hopes of cleaning it.

The stain didn't budge. As he pulled it closer to his eyes, Danny realized the stain wasn't brown—it was black, and seared into the bone.

He held it loosely between his fingers, eyes flitting up to the seven mounds of identical dirt, and wondered what sort of explosion could have charred this poor creature's bone so wholly black.


	2. Chapter 2: The Graveyard Shift

Danny flew through his own window and landed with a muted thud on the carpet. His landing hadn't been quite perfect, and he wobbled a bit. The hand gripping the bone fragment spiraled forward. Danny felt that familiar wrench in his stomach that came with falling, but he righted himself just in time. The hospital had taken more out of him than he'd thought.

"Danny!"

His head snapped to attention. He'd almost forgotten his two friends dueling it out on the X-box. The TV now displayed only fizzling static. The controllers were tossed carelessly on the carpet. It was Sam who spoke, and she stood maybe three feet away with her phone clutched painfully tight in white hands. Danny's stomach dropped at the look on her face.

"Hey," Danny offered. He ran his free hand through his hair to flatten it.

"That was not ten minutes." Sam's voice was choked with something between panic and anger. "What happened? Did you pass out again? I knew me and Tucker should have gone with you." Her eyes roved over him, inspecting, evaluating.

"What? —No, no I'm fine." A hot flush spread over Danny's cheeks. He looked away in guilt. "I guess I promised I'd be back in ten minutes, huh?"

"What happened?" Sam asked again. Fear this time, definitely. Her anger had been a good cover, but it was fading.

"We were afraid you might have…you know," Tucker motioned across his neck. He made a _squelch_ing sound with the back of his throat.

"No. No! Guys I'm fine. It's not that, I found something important. Really!" Danny answered. He _did _feel fine. Definitely…felt fine. His free hand roamed absently over his chest to prove it.

"You know, they were throwing around these uh…possibilities at the hospital." Tucker's eyes probed Danny. Danny watched them flit behind dirty glasses, like Tucker was scanning him for leaks, for any seam about to rip in two. "They started giving that whole…whole 'say your goodbyes' spiel to us, you know? You can't just disappear like that dude."

The hurt in Tucker's voice pierced Danny like a dagger. He moved his free hand to the nape of his neck. "No…No you're wrong. I wasn't that bad. I'm fine! See! Just got distracted because—" Danny fumbled with the hand he'd been keeping at his side, unfurled it to reveal the splinter of charred bone clamped in his palm. "This. _Vlad_. I flew past his house and he was burying something…o-or someone. There are charred bits of bone in the grass. They were all over…like pine needles. Why's he got _bone shards _all over his lawn, huh? He's doing something."

"You were at Vlad's?" Sam asked. Her eyebrows shot up as she took a step closer to Danny. She put a hand out as though to touch him. "_Why__?_ Why would you go to _Vlad's _when you've just gotten out of—Did he see you? Did he attack you?"

Danny shuffled away from her touch, paced to his bed. The room with its four powder-blue walls felt much too cramped for the three of them—or at least, too cramped for Danny to distance himself from his friends. The poor arrangement of the furniture left small enclosures and enclaves. Danny backed up between his dresser and computer but didn't dare lean against the wall. He could support himself. Sam and Tucker needed to see that.

"What, did you hit up Skulker on the way home? Stop for tea with Ember?" Tucker laughed hollowly at his own joke. Sam ignored it.

Danny looked carefully between his advancing friends. "It's nothing. I like seeing how he's still cleaning up the damage from me rescuing Danielle. That's it, okay? And no, he didn't see me."

Danny took a step towards Sam and brandished the bone squeezed between his fingers.

"I get it. I really do. It's dumb for me to be messing with Vlad when I'm not functioning at 100%. But that's why I need your help with this stuff, guys." Sam approached Danny and plucked the shard of bone delicately from his fingers. Danny watched her try in vain to chip away at the black staining its end. "Vlad could be killing people on his own property. I saw him digging a _grave _guys, and there were six others next to it. How'd you feel if someone else died because we thought we needed a little R and R?"

"Why's the bone burned?" Tucker asked. He stuck his nose close to the bone Sam held pinched between index finger and thumb. She pawned it off on him in response.

"The landmines, if I had to guess," Danny said absently.

"Landmines. The ones YOU almost blew yourself up with?" Sam asked. She bent her arm and jabbed Danny between the ribs. It was playful, but delicate. Danny had been elbowed a hundred times before, never with so little force.

"Yup," Danny answered with a wry smile, and he rubbed his side as though Sam had really jabbed him. He was still rather proud of his escape, even if Danielle had been less than thrilled with his near-suicidal antics to save her. She'd escaped. That was what was important.

"It's probably some poor rabbit or squirrel or something," Sam said. Her lips cemented into a thin, taut line. Danny watched her fists curl tight at her sides.

Tucker laughed instantly. The image of a bunny getting blown sky-high with a landmine transferred into Danny's mind, and he stifled a snort along with Tucker. Sam glared daggers at both of them.

Sam glared at Tucker first, then turned her scowl on Danny. "I'm just saying it doesn't seem like the sort of thing he'd do. You think Vlad Masters would be careless enough to kill someone on his own property like that? EXPLODE them?"

Danny avoided Sam's eyes, chewing his lip. "What about the graves then? There were graves. Seven of them. And he just finished burying one."

"What'd he bury inside it? 'Grave' doesn't mean human, you know. Maybe he's got a soft spot for the bunnies he explodes and he gives them funerals?" Tucker thrust the bone back to Danny, a strained smile stretching his lips.

"I don't know what he buried; it was invisible. It _was_ heavy though. Heavy enough that he had to roll it in."

"So what are you gonna do about it?" Tucker asked as he plopped down on the floor. He stared at the game controllers tossed to the wayside. "You gonna confront him about it? Because in your state—"

"Of course not," Danny answered quickly. He rubbed his hand over his chest. "If I asked him, it'd only give him the chance to lie to me and then hide the evidence…" Danny pushed away from the wall and took to pacing the bedroom again, teeth grinding. He massaged the bone in his hand like a stress ball. "I say we dig up those graves."

"You know I was gonna suggest pizza and a movie, but grave robbing sounds fun too." Tucker didn't bother laughing this time.

"Yeah, cuz our Friday night outings are always that normal Tuck," Danny answered.

"We could call the police on him, you know," Sam offered flatly. She stood and matched Danny's pacing. "Don't get me wrong, 'late night grave digging' sounds like a goth dream, but maybe…maybe this is the thing we can finally nail him on, you know? If the police discover a half-dozen bodies on his property…Well, we wouldn't even need to use his identity to get him locked away."

Danny kicked a stray controller in his path. "Sounds nice, but how are they supposed to hold him? He's a ghost. A ghost who can overshadow judges. A ghost who's also a billionaire with the ability to pay anyone off. Also he'd phase RIGHT through a jail cell."

"Good point," Sam conceded. She folded her arms again. "I've got a shovel at home, and my Grandma has a ski mask. God knows why." Her face quickly sobered. "But what do we do if there ARE bodies buried in his yard? Dead, decaying bodies of people he killed? We've dealt with 'messed up' before, Danny…but this?"

"If he's really killing people," Danny licked his lips as he stopped pacing, "then maybe I come clean to my parents, you know? I-it's been long enough. I out myself, I out him. I can't let people die just to keep my identity secret."

Tucker rubbed anxiously at the controller he'd regathered in his hand. He let out one short, humorless laugh. "Wow. Yesterday you're dying. Today we're digging up bodies. Tomorrow you're coming clean to your parents. Our lives are usually much more…quiet."

Danny responded with a cold laugh of his own. "Shovels, 2 am, I can pick you guys up." He stared down at the splinter of bone in his hand. "Sound like a plan?"

…

The three teenagers landed in thick, blanketing darkness. Coldness leeched through their thinly-soled shoes from the stiff, frigid ground. Air just as cold burned their throats, and black met them on all sides. Only the faint glow emanating from Danny in the middle could have given them away, but even then his aura was weak. It threw Sam and Tucker's faces into harsh, green contours that drew out their cheekbones and glared on Tucker's glasses.

The hill was shielded from the neighborhood by the sloping of the hill. It would have been a good sledding hill, Danny thought, if not for the bones and graves. Downhill, to the right, several dozen pinpricks of light gleamed from the distant town. Vlad's entire manor stood at an elevation at least two- or three-hundred feet above most of Amity.

Gusts of wind whistled through the grass and trees, making Sam and Tucker's teeth chatter. The Masters mansion was pitch black. Tucker had done the courtesy of disabling Vlad's ghost sensors so not even the steady blip of the security system broke their unholy silence. They were alone in a dark, cold world—at least, as far as living things went.

Danny summoned a pulsing ball of green energy in his palm. He kept its radius restrained and let the glow bleed over only the ground beneath him. The energy threaded over his finger, clumping in wispy mounds like he'd swatted through a spider web. The tiny, rhythmic pulses of energy were just enough to see by. Danny paced with Sam and Tucker at his heels, palm out and extended down like a metal detector. Blades of grass caught the light in sharp slivers. The contours of the ground smoothed out after twenty feet when Danny hit a divide between grass and dirt.

"Here," Danny said. He toed the hard, clumpy dirt.

He expanded the light just a bit to encompass the rectangle of dirt sitting before them, six feet long and maybe two wide. The edges were poorly defined, bending gently at the corners rather than meeting sharp turns. The whole shape better resembled a bathtub than a grave. Danny stretched his hand high overhead and caught its neighboring graves in the light.

"So you've really got no way of just…phasing the thing out of there?" Tucker asked, voice raspy. His legs shook. A shovel was clenched tightly in his hands, held close to his chest as if for protection.

"We don't know what it is Tuck…or, or how decayed it might be. I don't want to just blindly touch it," Danny responded. He lowered his hand away from the other graves, not wanting to think about them yet; digging up one corpse was stressful enough.

"You'd really rather dig it out? The ground's like…frozen dude. A-and what if we hit it with our shovel and like split it open, huh? What if there are maggots and stuff inside that just come spilling out. You want that?"

"Here's an idea," Danny answered with a cold smile. "How about I phase YOUR hand intangible, and YOU grab it, huh?"

"No way," Tucker answered. He drew his hands in closer, fists clenched tightly.

"Then why should _I_ have to?!"

Both boys stopped as the sound of metal thudding deep into dirt broke their argument. Sam had wedged her shovel into the ground and dug up the first clump of dirt. Her arms shook with the strain of cleaving the frozen ground, but she went back mechanically for a second attack.

He could just see Sam's dark saggy sweatpants, the purple coat hugging her arms and chest. The shovel flashed silver with each dig she made. Danny poured a little more power into the ectoplasm burning in his palm.

"Thanks," Sam answered as light flooded over her. She shielded her eyes from Danny's glare. It turned her sockets into crude black shadows. "Are you guys gonna help or not?"

Tucker swallowed and grabbed his own shovel. Danny made to retrieve his from the ground, but Tucker swatted his hand away.

"You flew us all the way out here, dude. Just sit for a minute."

"I'm fine," Danny insisted with a half-hearted lunge for his shovel.

"Then keep watch for Vlad."

Danny gritted his teeth, huffed, and shifted to look across the shallow hill. He illuminated the six neighboring graves, all in varying states of grassy regrowth. The farthest one was only a faint outline, younger grass blending in almost seamlessly with the old, weed-ridden lawn surrounding it.

"It looks so…systematic," Sam whispered. She'd let her shovel droop at her side as she turned to examine the line of graves with Danny.

"This is majorly creepy. You guys ever seen a dead body? I haven't. They smell horrible. What if it's all mush and slime when we dig it up, huh?" Tucker funneled his rambling fears into more fevered digging. He'd tunneled a hole one foot across and nearly six inches deep. Sam started up again to match his pace.

"We've handled creepy," Danny answered, but even Skulker's hoard of neck-slicing hunter's equipment had nothing on the eeriness of Vlad's frozen graveyard. "At least this thing won't attack us…hopefully. Also maybe it's NOT a dead body, you know? Maybe it's…maybe Vlad just has a weird way of disposing of his garbage."

"So you didn't see what he dumped in here? Not even shape or size?" Sam asked with a grunt as she wedged her shovel back into the dirt.

"It was big, but no…it was invisible, whatever it was." Danny shook his head, teeth clenched tight. Tucker had tossed Danny's shovel to the wayside, and Danny gathered it up eagerly. He buried his shovel into the ground to alleviate the tension in his shoulders. Tucker was too consumed in digging to notice. "Probably still _is_ invisible. Watch out for weird gaps in the dirt that are solid when you hit them."

Tucker shuddered and kept digging.

After a few silent minutes, Sam shifted positions. "Danny, where did you find that bone the first time?" Her body now half-faced the Masters' mansion.

"Maybe like…ten feet to your left. But I swear they're all over. You probably stepped on some and thought they were rocks—I'm trying not to touch down," Danny answered. His feet were a fraction of an inch above the ground.

Sam laid her shovel down and walked a few feet away from the graves.

"Danny, bring your light over here." She fell to her knees and pawed around in the dirt.

Danny followed. He lit up the ground that Sam swept her hands over. The grass bent largely in the same direction, likely from the wind. Sam smoothed over it, pressing and teasing the grass. When she stopped, her fingers had wrapped around something. She raised that arm with another bone shard clenched in her palm. This one was stouter and whole, with defined ridges and rounded edges. It looked like part of a finger.

"These _are_ all over. I thought this was just a rocky bit of hill, but I don't see a single rock. It's all these little white shards." Sam picked up half a dozen from the tiny area Danny's light exposed.. "There's way too many for it to be a rabbit."

"Two rabbits?" Tucker ventured hopefully. He hadn't stopped digging.

Danny bent his head to Sam. "So he's got the seven people in graves, and one poor soul who's blown to bits all over the yard?"

"…I'm kinda hoping not," Sam whispered.

Danny knelt at Sam's side to search the grass with her. When he skimmed his fingers through the grass, he hit countless bumps and ridges, a dozen or so within the same square foot of space. The rough edges snagged and tore at his gloves. The light revealed each to be stark white, burnt or charred on one end or sometimes both. Some were even cracked down to the marrow. Danny retracted his hand and shivered. Touching them made his stomach clench up, like the physical contact might spread whatever trauma had destroyed them in the first place.

"Guys!" Tucker called. His eyes had gone wide and glassy. "Come back please. We're getting deep. I can't see. I-I don't want to hit it alone."

With a pang of guilt, Danny realized he'd moved the light completely away from Tucker.

Sam nodded and pocketed one of the bones she'd grabbed, letting the rest fall back into the grass. Danny floated back with her empty-handed and grabbed his abandoned shovel. The digging went on in silence.

Tiny noises interrupted them from time to time, the kind that made their muscles tense and hearts race and blood freeze. Danny was constantly at the ready to phase his friends invisible, but every noise proved to be a false alarm. Wind. Birds. A wandering cat, thin and gray.

Tucker was the next to speak.

"S-shit." He recoiled with his shovel and stared hard into their ditch. "I hit something. That wasn't dirt. That wasn't dirt, guys. H-help."

"A rock maybe?" Danny asked, but he immediately shined the light where Tucker had been digging. A cavern met him, about a foot deep and sloping on both sides. Tucker worked up the courage to shakily prod it with his shovel again.

"N-n-n-no man, that's soft. I-it's fleshy. It's invisible."

Danny and Sam nodded, ignoring the dryness in their mouths as they worked to uncover the rest of Vlad's victim. The air felt so much colder. Their breath condensed in clouds in front of them.

Soon, a human shape of negative space emerged. It was partially on its side, a well defined gap for the head lying at one end. There were two spaces for bent feet at the back. One arm must have been smothered beneath the body, the other resting limply over the rest of the invisible form.

"It's a body…We dug up a body," Sam whispered with breathy disbelief. Her voice shook too. "That's totally the shape of a body. We dug up a dead person."

Danny floated above the grave. He lowered a trembling arm to the mold in the ground and, ever so carefully, ran a gloved hand over the form. He shivered at the touch before becoming more invasive. He grabbed parts, the arm, the legs. He felt a face.

"I'm….I'm gonna turn it visible guys," Danny choked out. "Ready?"

He didn't bother to look for the nods from Sam and Tucker. Instead he grabbed its exposed wrist and funneled his energy through it. It was hard, frozen, but moved like jelly when he touched it, as if it had come loose from the bones. The body formed under Danny's ghastly green light.

Its skin was sickly and gray, too soft at the center, frozen solid at the limbs. Its hair was messy and coated in dirt, its clothes too. A mulchy stench hit the air that Danny fought to ignore.

"Holy shit…holy shit," Tucker whispered over and over. "This is an actual grave. Vlad's been killing people and burying them in his own yard, T-that sick fuck. That sick—"

"Who is it?" Sam asked quietly.

Danny only shook his head and carefully threaded his arms under the body's shoulders. He lifted it from the grave and laid it out on the ground, dropping it in haste. Touching it made his whole stomach flip. He felt like he could break it.

He moved the light in his hand to the body's face.

"Oh my…god," Danny blanched. A wave of dizziness and nausea hit him, and he wobbled. He stared down in silence at the corpse, then slowly, steadily, he began prodding his own face. Dirt smudged onto his cheek.

"Who is it?" Sam pressed again. She hopped over the grave to Danny's side to see.

Danny rubbed his own face frantically. His breathing had gone violent and shallow.

"It's…me."

Sam's head shot up ramrod straight. Her eyes had widened, stretched well beyond the pupil.

"It's you?" Tucker choked. "No. No you're wrong. No, you're here."

"Well it's clearly not _me_," Danny fumbled back. His every word trembled. "I-it's a clone. It's one of Vlad's goddamned clones…Holy SHIT he's still making clones of me? He's making clones of me that DIE and he's burying them in his yard?" Danny backed away from the body, half-stumbling. He had one muddy palm pressed tightly to his mouth to hold in his leaking disgust and rage. His bright eyes, pulsing neon, shot to the mansion. "That sick fucking twisted—"

"These graves too, then?" Sam motioned to the rows of rectangles that neighbored this grave. "I-it's your clones?" She fell to the ground, legs crossed, and tried to calm her breathing. "But that…that means he hasn't killed anyone, yeah? T-these aren't innocent people at least. They're just…abominations."

Danny rose into the air. His gaze flickered between shell-shocked Tucker and semi-relieved Sam. He let his palm drop from his mouth. "Yeah. Yeah that's true, but I'm still gonna pulverize him. He'd been so…non-problematic ever since I rescued Danielle! I thought he'd just gotten tired of all the damage from messing with me…This? This is sick. It looks just like me. He's improved. He's close. W-what's he gonna do when he gets it right, huh? What's he gonna do to me?"

"Danny, r-relax. You're sick still. You gotta calm down," Tucker whispered from the ground. He'd fallen to his knees and worked hard to breathe through his nose. He wasn't looking at Danny as he spoke; he watched the dead body. The black hair caked in dirt, the grimy gray face, the half-cracked unfocused eyes. "I was real close to seeing you dead yesterday, you know? Now I'm looking at you dead tonight. I'm looking at you dead and you gotta stay calm… for me. I can't…don't do this to me, Danny."

Danny threw his arms out with enough force to pop his shoulder. "Well me—it—_him_ is still Vlad's victim in this. I'm gonna stop him. I'm gonna go in there and blast his head off his—"

"Danny please relax!" Sam watched him anxiously from the ground, realizing he'd floated too high for her to reach. "Tucker's right. The hospital said—"

"I'm not in the hospital anymore!" Danny sliced his hand through the air. "I'm fine! I'm healthy! I'm not wearing the dumb gown anymore, so they can't tell me…" Danny stopped. He straightened up, eyes glazing, and stared far into the distance. In the fluorescent light of his hand, his whole face lost all color. He looked like an abandoned marionette, suddenly limp.

"Danny, what?" Tucker asked hesitantly.

"Tucker…what am I wearing?"

"…Your hazmat suit?" Tucker ventured.

"No, no no not…me. Him. It. _Whatever_. What's the…clone wearing? When I pulled it out I swear—"

"It's too dirty, man. I can't see it."

Danny plummeted to earth. He didn't land so much as let gravity take him, and walked mechanically to his dead clone. He took his free, non-glowing hand and feverishly wiped the dirt from his duplicate's cold, gray, mud-caked body. The clothing made his blood run cold, and Danny let his weak knees give out under his meager weight. His head sagged. His eyes shot around aimlessly.

"What…what about the clothes, Danny?" Sam asked as she crawled to the clone.

"It's wearing a dressing gown…a white dressing gown, dumb balloon pattern on front." Danny pawed at his own chest. He tossed his head toward the clone, beckoning Sam to look. "It's wearing a hospital dressing gown. That's the gown I was wearing yesterday…he's wearing it."

"Danny…" Sam started, her voice cracking. She moved numbly to his side.

Danny leaned his weight into her. "How does he have my gown, Sam?"

Sam's delicate hands, still gloved, moved to his arm. She rolled up the hazmat with little resistance and studied the shallow IV prick there. With more hesitation, she took the dead body by its left wrist and wiped the dirt from it.

"Danny…Danny, it has the IV prick too. It's got the hole right here. You both have it."

Danny snapped his head to Tucker. "Tuck, what did the hospital tell you guys yesterday? What'd they tell you about my condition? It's impossible, right? It's impossible that I died there. They'd tell you. They wouldn't let me walk out of there without heralding me as the next goddamn Jesus Christ. Vlad just took my clothes. Those are just standard gowns…he's got his own or something."

Tucker blinked, looking not at Danny or the body. "They said to be realistic. They said they could keep you comfortable…They said…to think about our goodbyes."

"I don't…I don't get it," Danny's voice cracked. He looked around with wild eyes. "Who's in the other graves then? W-who's this? Because I'm me…I'm me. And the bones all over. Why are they burned? Why are they here? I blew up a bomb here once, I blew up a bomb but I survived."

"Danny, I don't know. I-it's Vlad. Vlad does messed up stuff. He mighta…just copied you exactly and his copy died." Sam had returned to him and held him by the shoulders. She intentionally knelt between Danny and the dead body. "You're you, Danny. You're you…a-aren't you?"

Danny shot a desperate glance between Sam and Tucker. Tucker had waxed silent. Sam looked at him with pleading eyes.

"…Am I?"

Danny wrenched himself from Sam's grip and shot inside the mansion. He disappeared as little more than a blur, and silence pulsed down thick and suffocating on Tucker, Sam, and the corpse of their best friend. Muted shouts and cries of indignation rang out into the cold winter night. A light flickered on inside. In one tussling ball, a pajama-clad Vlad Masters phased through the wall with Danny gripping and clawing at him. The latter hoisted Vlad beneath the armpits and flew him, kicking and writhing, to the gravesite. They fell together when Vlad nailed Danny with an ectoblast in his human form.

Vlad fell with a thud into the grass, righted himself quickly. Before he could transform he glanced over to Sam and Tucker, to the shovels and dug-up dirt and the body, all just barely visible in Danny's artificial glow. All the vigor drained from his body.

Danny shoved himself upright.

Vlad fixed his hair and stood up straighter. His expression had morphed as though he'd been sucking on a lemon, dark and twisted in the minimal light. "I assume…this is why you offered me such a pleasant awakening at three in the morning?"

"Explain, Vlad," Danny choked out, eyes still wide, body trembling as he kicked off into the air. He cast his artificial light farther and brought the corpse into plain view. He made no effort to keep his voice down. "Explain all this to me!"

Vlad offered only a frustrated sigh. "I have. I have explained, over and over. I've explained this seven different times to your gray, exhausted, expiring face, and I must say I'm getting tired of it. Just once Daniel, I expect you to get it." His mouth had pressed into a thin line, eyes examining. "Tell me what you think you're seeing."

"You're making clones of me!" Danny shouted, finger extended in accusation. "Yeah? Is that a clone of me?!" His arm shifted to the crumpled body beside its disturbed grave.

"Yes, I've been making clones. Yes, that is a clone of you." Vlad folded his arms patiently.

Relief flooded bright and visible over Danny's face. His whole body lost its tension, and he exhaled sharply.

"Okay…okay so that is NOT me down there? That is a CLONE." Danny pointed again at his decaying duplicate.

"That is in fact a clone. Congrats.," Vlad answered tepidly. His cold, exposed feet were planted firmly on the ground. His piercing eyes didn't leave Danny. He wanted more.

"Yeah. Yeah, I knew that," Danny answered with a vigorous nod. "I'll make you stop. I'll stop your cloning, I swear it!"

"Ohhh, you do not want me to do that," Vlad drawled. A small smile split his lips. "And that's quite a….hypocritical request."

Danny's face paled at this, but confusion rather than panic knit his eyebrows together.

"Who's in the other graves, Vlad?" Sam challenged. She pushed herself to her feet with a wobble.

"Other clones," Vlad answered nonchalantly.

Danny nodded again at this. He kept nodding. "Okay. Okay yeah, that's what I thought." He swallowed convulsively. "A-and what about the bones everywhere?" He wrestled the charred splinter from his pocket. "This! Sam's got one too! Who'd they come from? Or what?"

Vlad licked his lips, considering. He brushed in vain at the grass stains now peppering his pink robes. "This answer, you're not going to like."

"Who, Vlad?"

"A nuisance, Daniel. Those bones came from someone who was a major pain in my behind, who continues to be a major pain in my behind. And it is something you're better off not knowing."

A beat of silence hit them.

"You've killed someone." There was no question in Danny's voice, only dark condemnation. His jaw had gone rigid. Thick, heavy hatred radiated off his face. He stared at Vlad with open disgust.

"They died on my property, Daniel, it's different." Vlad answered the question curtly. Somehow, the accusation had offended him.

"Either way, you caused their death. That's not a clone, huh? It's someone. It's a person. A dead person."

"You're right, it's not a clone. They set off the mine," Vlad continued with a shrug. "I tried to stop them, and they were not welcome on my property to begin with."

Icy panic rushed suddenly through Danny's veins. July. Screaming for Danielle. Vlad looming over him. The heat. The damning heat. He slammed the ground…

"…I'll come clean to my parents," Danny threatened. He stared hard into Vlad's cold eyes. His trembling had returned. "I will. I'll tell them about you too, about all the things you did, about how you tried cloning me. How you killed some guy here. We'll get the police involved, the Guys in White maybe. They'll put you away. They'll end you, and you'll never come back."

Vlad barked a laugh at this. He threw his shoulders back and smiled hugely in Danny's wavering light. It made Danny bristle.

"I'm serious, Vlad!" Spit flew from his mouth. His eyes burned bright.

"Oh I know you are," Vlad responded. He smoothed a hand over his hair once more and surveyed the graves. "But you don't want to do that."

"And why not?" Tucker finally voiced. It came out scratchy, hollow, weak.

"Because you'll die, Daniel."

Danny straightened at this. His teeth ground together. "Try me. I can take you, Vlad. You can't kill me."

"No, no I won't kill you. You'll simply die…likely inside of five weeks, since I'm still far from fixing the heart defect in my clone model."

Danny breathed heavily, eyes fixed on Vlad. He swung one arm out and let loose an ectoblast into neighboring tree. The whole ground shook with the impact. "You're not making sense."

Vlad broke eye contact. He looked around at his three intruders, as well as the clone on the ground. "I suppose I'm not getting out of this without an explanation, huh? What a pain…" He refocused on Danny with a grin. "Oh, but I can edit this memory from your next…upgrade. Save me some hassle." He glanced over his right shoulder "You two are my main problem."

"Yeah…yeah, you're going to explain yourself…" Danny trailed off. His eyes were fixed on Sam and Tucker; Vlad's last comment had come off as a threat against them. "Or else you can—c-can say goodbye to your freedom! We've got more than enough evidence here! And I'll expose you as Plasmius. You should be scared!" Danny's voice cracked. He felt drained. His head was killing him.

"Oh should I?" Vlad responded with a smug huff. He shifted his freezing feet on the ground.

Danny clenched his fists. He dropped to the ground, marched up to Vlad, and grabbed him by the collar of his robes. Vlad let it happen, but he held his head high.

"Explain."

Vlad sighed. "Oh how exciting. Give me a moment, I want to figure out the best way to tell you this time." He shut his eyes and breathed in deep. "Such a nice expression to see frozen on a body, you know? Shock and betrayal, and…disgust."

"I don't get what you mean." Danny tightened his grip. The terror in his face was obvious. "Explain it better."

A sobering expression hit Vlad's face. His body lost some of its tension. "Okay, bit of a lie. I do feel bad seeing such a lost little kid die over and over, but in the end it's no real tragedy. I suggest you calm down a bit. There are worse fates in this world."

Something cold and jagged pressed itself against Vlad's head. Sam had shot to his side and held the blade of her muddy shovel eye-level with Vlad. It was now pressed firmly to his temple.

"I just spent the last hour digging up the dead body of my best friend, Mr. Masters. I'm not in the mood for your cryptic headgames. Explain, or I'll bash this through your skull."

"In my defense, Ms. Manson, you have not actually seen his body. You've seen the body of a clone." A thin, powerful smile broke over his lips. "But I do believe you pocketed a piece of it."

"…What?"

"What's in your pocket, my dear?"

"A-a bone. A finger bone."

Vlad nodded. "And I believe Danny has been waving around a shard of his own shin?"

Danny smacked Vlad hard across the cheek. It didn't faze the billionaire. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Alright, I'm maybe taking some liberty with this. The shin bone isn't yours…It's Danny Fenton's."

"I'm right here, Vlad."

"I'm talking about Danny Fenton, not you," Vlad responded flippantly

Teeth gritted, Danny transformed. His rings momentarily blinded the four of them. They faded to reveal a very human Danny. "Better?"

"No."

With a frustrated shout, Danny changed back to Phantom and summoned the light again in his hand.

Vlad's eyes shot between Danny and his friends. "You're really not going to get it, are you? Well, perhaps one of you is thinking it, and is just too afraid to speak your mind." Vlad refocused on Danny, who still gripped him deathly tight by the collar. "Tell you what—I'll explain what's going on, but first I want to hear what you think. Honestly. What does all this add up to in your mind?"

Danny fought the urge to slap Vlad again. "You…you're making clones of me. They get sick and they fail and you bring them to the hospital to save them but they can't, and they die. Then you bring them back here to bury them…A-and you killed someone here."

Vlad tsked, disappointed. He shut his eyes and shook his head. "You do know what's happening. You're not that dumb. You're just too afraid to say it."

"Tell me, Vlad. That was the deal. I told you what I thought was happening, now tell me."

Vlad pursed his lips. "Ah, but I said you had to be honest."

Danny bunched his fists tighter in Vlad's robes and yanked the man closer. Vlad was lifted clean off his feet. "I will end you, old man. Now talk."

Vlad sighed. "Danny Fenton was on my property seven months back. He tripped, I cornered him, and he had the beautifully brilliant idea of slamming his palm into the landmine I had planted there." Vlad jerked his head to the open lawn beside them. "Here, in fact."

"I remember, Vlad," Danny ground through his teeth. "Why are you telling me what I already know?"

"Because you don't actually remember. You have the memories, but they're not yours." Vlad stared hard into Danny's eyes, challenging, a slight smile twisting his mouth. "You never did that. You couldn't have, because the boy who DID set off the mine was blown into a couple thousand separate bits of charred bone and flesh." Vlad flashed his teeth. "Ms. Manson found a finger, and you found a bit of a shin."

Danny shook his head at this, laughed, shook his head again, and accidentally released Vlad from his grip. "No. You're wrong. You're saying the bits of bone are—"

"Danny Fenton."

"A-and the graves are—"

"His clones who replaced him."

"…And I am—"

"Clone number eight," Vlad answered. Danny hit the ground. "I've got number nine on ice inside, in case I need him sooner than expected."

"I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get what you mean, Vlad." Danny got back up and threw himself at Vlad, hands gripped painfully tight over the billionaire's shoulders. Danny got in his face again. "You're a terrible liar. Tell him, Sam. He's a terrible liar. Why is that clone wearing a hospital gown, Vlad? And don't lie. You're a terrible liar."

"Oh I'm quite a good liar. I'm just not lying now." He bent to Sam. "What's in your pocket, dear?"

Sam didn't let the shovel drop a single inch as she retrieved the bone from her pocket. Vlad snatched the shard from her with a quick flick of his wrist. His other arm curled back and grabbed Danny's rigid hand from his shoulder. He aligned the bone and hand where they overlapped. "Ring finger, left hand by the looks of it."

Danny wrenched his arm back. "It doesn't make sense."

"It makes perfect sense. Danny died on this lawn seven months ago—for a very stupid reason, might I add. I knew keeping him alive was to my benefit, so I uploaded his consciousness from the chip I'd been using to track him and model the clones, and I plopped clone number one out in the yard where Danny would have been."

Vlad twisted his neck and motioned to the farthest grave. It had nearly melted back into the surrounding grass.

"The only problem was that the clones haven't been perfected. They're simple bootlegs. I haven't quite found the formula for the human body's…tenacity. So when he died, I brought in clone number two, and I buried him here." Vlad slipped Danny a slimy grin. "Lather, rinse, repeat, clone number eight."

"No. Oh no no, you liar. You're a liar Vlad." Danny shot horrified, strained eyes to the grave Vlad had indicated. "Why would you keep bringing me back, huh? I'm your enemy. You're lying. You want me dead."

"Ah, there's your ego." Vlad took a step back and admired the rest of his makeshift graveyard. "You keep the ghosts at bay. You keep Maddie happy. So long as you keep your identity secret, I stay safe." His shaded eyes turned back to Danny. He summoned his own ball of magenta fire in his palm, which threw bony contours across his old face. "I have plenty of reasons for keeping you alive."

"No. No, you're full of it. You're trying to mess with me. What you're saying isn't possible. No way you could replace me with no one knowing. I'll burn your lab down, Vlad."

"Daniel, where's that nasty bruise that was on your right elbow?"

Danny blinked and twisted his arm around. He took the hem of his sleeve, hiking it up to his bicep. Pale, perfect skin looked back. "It healed."

"It wasn't healed yesterday," Vlad responded.

Danny kept his eyes to his elbow, expression blank. "N-no, but now it is."

"You sure? Because him—" Vlad gestured with his head to the limp body on the ground, "the poor clone you just dug up—he's got that bruise on his elbow. I know. I spotted it after he'd already…moved on. Little too late to make the modification to you."

Danny wrenched his attention away from his own arm and pinned it to Vlad. His wide eyes skimmed Vlad's face, looking for any crack in his expression.

"Tucker…Tucker, check!" Danny squeaked. He refused to let his eyes leave Vlad. He stared the man down like a cornered mouse.

Tucker roused after a few seconds of silence. His whole face drained at the address, and he crawled to the body's side. "I-it's hard to see!" Tucker called out shakily. He'd crouched and gripped the dead body's too-soft arm between his fingers.

Danny growled and expanded the radius of his green light. As a courtesy, Vlad did the same.

"Yeah…Yeah, it's here, man! A-all purpley and blotchy. Ew. Ew no I-I don't want to touch it anymore!" Tucker threw the arm down and gave off a choked whimper.

Danny made a noise like he'd been kicked in the stomach. Vlad shut his eyes and shrugged, a filthy grin stretching over his pale face. "I warned you Daniel, you didn't want to know the answer."

"Stop…" Danny shook his head and clenched his jaw hard enough to risk cracking teeth. "Stop talking like you've convinced me," he choked out once he got his mouth open. His voice cracked, holding back strain and panic like a dam seconds from bursting. "You haven't. You won't. I know your games."

"Games," Vlad repeated with sarcastic reverence. He threw his arms out. "Oh of course, my games… That's what I'm here for. I've got nothing better to do than play an elaborate prank on some bratty fifteen year old."

Danny nodded. "Game…" he repeated quietly.

Vlad clapped his hands. "Alright then, new game. Twenty questions! Question one: How did you survive setting off a landmine on my property, Daniel? How did you survive unscathed?"

"They're s'posed to be yes-or-no questions…" Tucker mumbled. He skittered backwards from the dead body, and no one paid him any mind.

"I…musta phased intangible," Danny answered after a beat.

Vlad nodded, eyes shut again. "Oh, of course. And how exactly did you get better yesterday? You were at death's door, you know."

"How'm I supposed to know?" Danny held himself up straighter, arms rigid at his side. "I'm not a doctor. They gave me medicine."

Vlad mockingly considered this. "Would I be wrong if I said you've been getting sick about once a month since July? More often at the beginning, less frequently toward the end?"

"I-it's the ghost fighting." Danny swept his hand in front of him. He turned it inward and motioned to himself. "Takes a lot out of me! I don't take care of myself."

"And the gown? The hospital gown?" Vlad stepped closer. His bare feet had gone dangerously white on the ground. Sam stumbled sideways to keep her shovel pressed to his head. The magenta in his palm bled into Danny's green light, casting the three of them in a sickly brown muck. "How do I have your gown? The one with the bit of jelly you spilled on the right breast pocket?

Danny didn't bother checking the clone this time. He was too afraid to try.

"You stole it," Danny said as he lunged forward. He'd hoped to make Vlad flinch. Only Sam shrank back.

"You're grasping." Vlad twitched his head to the right, the smile back. Sam's shovel was knocked to the wayside as Vlad's eyes stared deep into hers. "Samantha! What do you think? And Tucker too."

Danny whirled. "You don't believe him!" He whipped his head over his shoulder to Tucker. "He's Vlad! He's full of it!"

Both Sam and Tucker only stared up, ashen-faced. Sam didn't bother raising the shovel again.

"C-come on guys!" Danny insisted, arms thrown wide. "I'm me. I'm ME. How could I not be?"

"So then…the Danny I knew yesterday died? He really died?" Tucker asked quietly. He plopped down on the ground.

"Oh, don't get so sentimental. It was only a clone," Vlad said with a laugh. Danny turned to him with eyes that could kill.

"You're just…lying. And you can't prove me wrong," Danny whispered.

Vlad shoved his face in Danny's. "Oh I can't? I suppose I've just developed a nice hobby of cloning you and burying them in my yard? I suppose the shards of bone are decoration? I suppose I stole that dressing gown off your back because I like playing dress up with my failed experiments? And the…continuity error with the bruise is just an elaborate hoax to get you to believe something I didn't want you to know in the first place?" Danny flinched back, but Vlad barreled forward. "Do you want me to show you the next clone suspended in my lab? Do you want me to run the DNA testing on these bones? Would you like to say hi to the boy that's going to replace you when you die?"

Small, silent tears spilled onto Danny's cheeks. He refused to blink. He only stared, frozen, into Vlad's animated face. The ghastly ectoplasmic light cast long shadows beneath his eyes. It amplified the terror twitching on his lips, made his wide eyes look so much younger on his gaunt face.

"Am. I. Lying?" Vlad ground out.

This time, Danny didn't respond. Tears spilled thick and damning down his face, and one tiny sob wrenched itself from his throat. Another followed quickly, until Danny was clutching his arms to himself, staring in open horror at his own fabricated hands, at the graves of his past selves.

"That's what I thought," Vlad growled, satisfied.

He turned to Sam, who'd raised her shovel again at the outburst. It shook in her grasp. Tears shone bright in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

"How could you do this to me?" Danny whispered.

Vlad leaned to his left, head tilted mockingly over his shoulder. He raised an eyebrow to Danny.

"How could I save you?" Vlad responded incredulously. "You'd be dead if not for me. Show a little gratitude. You weren't easy to make."

Danny shook his head, eyes to his palms. When he spoke, there was hardly a trace of emotion left in his voice. Tears still streamed heavily down his cheeks. His chest still heaved, but a glassy calm overtook his face.

"How could you…tell me?"

Vlad huffed, almost as though he were laughing. "It wasn't my idea to drag me out of bed at three in the morning demanding answers. This is on you."

"…How could you?" Danny repeated. He hadn't heard the response.

Vlad sighed and shook his head. "Because I'm about to fix that." He raised his right hand and touched the ring on his index finger. He peeled open a small compartment. "For emergencies."

He flicked something inside, and Danny plummeted unconscious from the air. Rings swept past him, leaving a human dressed in clothing much too thin for the cold February night. Sam and Tucker lurched from their spots as Vlad caught him. Sam swung the shovel at his head. In a fit of annoyance, Vlad phased through it and sent her stumbling blindly to the wayside.

"Oh calm down!" he shouted, turning. "I've got a lot of cleaning up to do thanks to you three. You could stay out of my way!" Even wearing nothing but a robe, the man was terrifying.

"We won't let you take him!" Tucker shouted hoarsely. He pushed himself to his feet.

"Have you learned NOTHING?" Vlad growled and loosed one arm from Danny to run over his own hair. "I'm giving him back. I need him NORMAL. I need him acting as he always does. I've been manufacturing functional clones of him just so he can continue being a pain in my ass. You don't need to save him from me."

Sam took a few shaky steps forward, shovel still extended like it was her last tie to sanity. Tucker's gaze had fallen to the dead clone of Danny still at the foot of the grave. With both Dannys unconscious and human, there was really no visible difference between them.

"I'm headed inside to do a little system reboot on him." He hoisted Danny over his shoulder. "I've got a computer in there constantly backing up his consciousness, in case he drops dead before I expect it. I'm resetting him. I'm doing a good thing."

"W-why should we trust you?" Sam countered uncertainly.

"Would you rather fight me?" Vlad challenged, eyes flashing. "_Would_ you fight me for a clone?"

Silence beat on them.

"…I-it's still Danny," Tucker breathed. He hardly kept his balance.

Vlad split a grin at this. "Good. Because I can't reboot you two. You know what you know. Just keep in mind that if I go down, if I'm exposed or arrested or anything of that manner…well, there will be no one around to reset your friend when his time comes." The smile had receded. Cold, serious eyes stared back. "If I go down, Danny dies. Understand?"

Jaws clenched, eyes wide, Sam and Tucker nodded.

The easy smile returned to Vlad's face. "He's Danny. Whatever Danny I dump at your doorstep is Danny, and that's all that ought to concern you."

Vlad transformed with Danny's limp form over his shoulder. He made to turn before thinking better of it. His body facing away, Vlad looked over his free shoulder at Sam and Tucker.

"And of course you're not going to tell him who he is? What's happened here? Who's buried in my yard? That's will stay our little secret."

Sniffling noises broke the silence. Sam turned, startled to see Tucker crying. His face bunched up; his glasses fogged; his full lips puckered as he fought to contain each sob.

"I-it's okay Tucker," Sam said without thinking. "It's the same. Everything's the same. Everything's fine. It's still Danny. It's still gonna be Danny. He never has to know."

Vlad nodded appreciatively and hiked Danny higher on his shoulder. "Good." He raised his free hand and wiggled his fingers at them. "Toodles!" he said before vanishing underground with Danny. Sam watched them disappear and collapsed on the cold ground.

She stared hard into the half-open eyes of the corpse beside her.

…..

"Aaaaaand first!" Danny shouted triumphantly. He laughed and threw his controller down. His palms dug into the carpet as he leaned back on his arms for support. "Man I never win at these things. You guys are really losing your touch." Danny rolled to one side and pumped his fist.

Sam laughed rigidly. Tucker stared down at his controller.

"What? Sore losers?" Danny asked. He looked at his two quiet friends and lost some of his boisterousness. "…Okay okay I get it. 'Danny you need to be more careful with your health,'" he imitated, wagging his finger. "'Danny we can't afford to lose you.' I appreciate the sentiment, but I really am FINE. I promise!" He looked side to side, anxious at the lack of response. "Now let's…play mindless videogames, okay?"

Sam nodded mechanically and picked up her controller again. "Okay. I'm going to beat you."

"That didn't sound very enthusiastic," Danny scoffed, but he chose 'rematch' anyway. "I get that Tucker gets pretty bummed out by hospitals, but you Sam?"

He entered the next round with less enthusiasm, but still overtook Sam and Tucker within half a lap. His face loosened as he lost himself in his own thoughts.

"Oh," Danny straightened but kept his eyes focused on his screen, "you wanna know something weird though? I was poking around Vlad's lawn recently…kinda forget when. Anyway, he was burying something. Really creepy. Really…not normal. I'm gonna check it out tonight if you want to come along."

Tucker paused the race suddenly. Danny yelped in indignation

"Come on Tucker, I was in the lead! Unpause it."

"Dude. No. Stay away from Vlad's," Tucker said sternly. He didn't blink; he didn't look away from Danny; he didn't make to unpause the game.

Danny laughed uncomfortably. He looked anywhere but Tucker. "What? Why? Sam—"

"He's right Danny…You're still weak from the hospital stay."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Well then I'll check it out once I'm all better."

"…Just don't, Danny. Leave Vlad out of it. For us," Tucker volleyed.

Danny waited. He looked between them. He held his breath expecting the joke to drop. It didn't.

Disbelief scrunched his eyebrows. He lay his own controller down and met Tucker's unwavering gaze. "…You guys know something."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked. Danny turned to her, and she made a conscious effort to look him in the eyes. Her focus flickered back and forth between both eyes.

"What are you trying to make me not do?" Danny asked just as sternly.

"We're not trying to 'not make' you do anything." Tucker grabbed the controller cord with his foot, wire clenched between big and second toes. "We're both just a little sick of dealing with the dude who keeps trying to kill us."

"Tucker, all the things we deal with want to kill us. It's in the job description." Danny looked between them with more anxiety than before. "Seriously, what are you guys trying to keep me from doing?"

Silence, thick and viscous as swamp water flowed over them. With a twitch Tucker snatched up his controller, unpaused the game, and sped forward. He laughed mercilessly as his character knocked Danny clear off screen.

"Psych!" Tucker cried out. He rocked side to side with his character. "No way we're gonna let you win two games in a row, dude! That's what we're keeping you from doing."

Sam smiled and plowed forward. Danny had grabbed his controller and pressed A desperately as his character regenerated on screen.

"Not fair not fair not fair! You can't freak me out like that guys. You know I'm gonna take you seriously."

"Yeah well screw Vlad, okay? You should be focused on not getting your butt handed to you by us." Tucker whooped with joy as he hit a powerup and shot way ahead of both Sam and now-lagging Danny.

"You guys are assholes," Danny conceded with a laugh. He shoved Tucker over. The momentary fault let Sam take the lead.

"Oh come on Sam! Danny shoved me that is so not fair."

"You're already the cheater!" she countered as she completed the first lap. "So don't come crying to me."

"I'm the real victim! I'm in last now," Danny shouted with mock anger. He stuck one sock-clad foot out and kicked at Sam's controller, which she deftly moved out of his reach. Danny now leaned hard into Tucker's lap, still abusing the controller with his overly-aggressive thumb tactics.

It's a good thing Danny refused to let his eyes leave the screen. Otherwise he would have seen the cold, expressionless, and deathly serious looks that Sam and Tucker exchanged just then.

"Face it Danny, you're just bad at this game," Sam gloated. "You just are. Always have been, always will be. You're not changing anytime soon. Right Tuck?"

"Yup," Tucker answered, and Danny shoved them both.

…..

_(a huge thanks to **Haiju** for all her beta work!) _


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